


Signifying Nothing

by notalone91



Category: Barry (TV 2018)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Everyone is Dead, Murder, Murder-Suicide, Revenge, Sally is really only there in spirit, So much death, Suicide, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:49:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27144781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalone91/pseuds/notalone91
Summary: When Sally is gunned down in cold blood after an audition, it all has a familiar feeling to it.  Who's behind it?  What else will her death cost Barry?-or-What the series finale of Barry could look like, in my mind.
Relationships: Barry Berkman/Sally Reed, Noho Hank/Cristobal Sifuentes
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	Signifying Nothing

**Author's Note:**

> See End Note for more specific content warnings.
> 
> Also, just, know that I'm sorry about this. I remember after s2e8 aired, people were like BUT WHAT HAPPENS NOW and uh... this is a rough estimate of how I think "what happens now" ends.

“I’m such a fucking idiot,” Barry curses through choked sobs. He takes fistfuls of his hair and paces the green room frantically. “Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid!” Tears pour from his eyes.

It would almost be beautiful, Cousineau thinks from his position in the doorway. Almost, if Barry weren’t 90 seconds out from his call. He should be in the wings by now. But still, he remembers the last time this soliloquy was performed in this theatre- in these hallowed halls of Melpomene. He rethinks insisting. He’s in no mood to clean up glass in his classroom tonight. Not when he’s right there with his student, matching his pain line by line. 

Okay, maybe not line for line, he thinks, but he’s been there. He’s seen it. He’s lived it. The only way to process the pain for an actor is through a life lived on a stage. Barry has another life to live. It’s what-

“30 seconds to places for Scottish Soliloquy,” The backstage speaker crackles. 

Barry lets out a groan and pushes past his teacher and friend. Vaguely, behind him, he hears, “The play’s the thing, Barry.”

Instead, he slips back into a too recent memory; the memory that brought him to be standing on stage for a memorial showcase for Sally Reed. 

Just 3 days prior, he’d dropped Sally off at an audition. He kissed her good-bye and told her to break someone’s legs before she vanished into the office building in Hollywood in a ball of golden light. He still wasn’t sure about a lot of her superstitions, but he had enough of his own to, at the very least, respect them. He gave the bullet an old friend had given him so he’d ‘never run out of ammo’ an extra squeeze for her before heading off to his job for the day.

The hit should have been gravy. Two guys in an apartment hideout. It was a part of town with which he was familiar. A mid-gentrification, formerly Dominican neighborhood about 2 miles from Hank’s stash house. Easy in, easy out. High crime. A couple of gunshots were likely to go almost unnoticed.

But nothing’s ever guaranteed. 

In fact, the only thing he’s ever been guaranteed is uncertainty and distress. Why should this be any different?

First, the hideout was surrounded by cops. He passed it over and found someplace safe to call and check in on Sally, then see what the fuck Fuches’ deal was. He laid low for an hour or so, letting the heat wear down. When he made his second pass, he locked eyes with his mark as the cops led him out in cuffs.

Barry hissed out a harsh string of expletives. The guy wasn’t Dominican. He was Bolivian. Fuches had sent him to clean up his own mess. One of the lone survivors from the stash house and, of course, he’d made him. Of course.

Swiftly, he made his way back across town to Fuches. He would have made it there, too, if not for fucking Sasha and her fucking phone call. She wanted him to swing by and run lines for their scene with Natalie.

Because, of course she did.

“30 minutes, Baz,” she pleaded. “45 tops.” Barry rolled his eyes and tightened his grip on his steering wheel. “I promise, an hour or less. I’m begging here.” There was a pause, then, “Well, not really  _ begging  _ begging, but asking for a huge favor. I’ll owe you one.” He opened his mouth to contest but was cut off by her continued thought. “Well, it’s not like it’s that big of an imposition anyway because Sally has that audition and you’re in the damn scene, too. God knows you of all people could use the extra practice.” Barry let out a sigh and started to answer, but there really was no point. “Don’t go getting offended on me. I know that was bitchy, but you know I’m trying that Pinocchio Method, only speaking the pure and ugly truth no matter how you’ll be perceived. It’s great. You should try it. Might help. Anyway, see you soon, Baz. You’re a gem.” He muffled an argument. “Also, one tall vanilla soy latte with two splendas and a venti eggnog latte with whipped cream and an extra pump of cinnamon dolce for Natalie. Ta.”

Somehow, he knew that phone call was going to cost him. What he didn’t know was how much.

He had made it for their study session in record time, caffeine in hand, all the while sending encouraging texts to Sally. As it turned out, the girls just didn’t want to pay for DoorDash and really didn’t need him after all. They ran through the scene once. He was out in under 6 minutes.

Barry called Fuches, searching for final instructions, blood pressure steadily climbing all the while. Something felt amiss about the whole day. As the time for the end of Sally’s audition slot neared, he made his way back for the high rise. 

Sirens pierced the freshly darkened night.

He started counting to ten in a fruitless effort to calm himself. That was all but shot to shit when 3 cop cars and an ambulance screamed past. He sped up a little, following their glow with his eyes. Another 3 cars joined the chase at the intersection ahead of him. “Please don’t stop there.  _ Please  _ don’t stop there. I don’t want her to see anything like that,” he repeated to himself. “Sally shouldn’t have to-”

The cars were all congregated in front of the building where he’d left Sally. His blood ran cold. The street was quickly barricaded off with bright blue saw horses and even ore patrol cars. Whatever happened must have been going on or quite a while. Barry edged his car to the curb and got out. He didn’t even bother to close the door as he ambled toward the plaza, weaving between rubberneckers all the while.

As he broached the edge, somehow, all his years of military training and life as a hitman could never have prepared him for the sight before him.

The lights rise on an empty stage. Barry stands full out at center, staring at his shoes. It’s all Cousineau can do to restrain himself from going onstage to hug the poor boy and usher him offstage. He’s about to draw the curtain shut when, at last, Barry speaks.

“I have almost forgot the taste of fears,” he starts quietly, testing his still hoarse voice. Finding his center, he continues, “The time has been, my senses would have cool’d to hear a night-shriek and my fell of hair would, at a dismal treatise, rouse and stir as life were in’t.” He addresses the audience, trying not to see her in the front row, to hear the too-raw screams of bystanders that night. “I have supp’d full with horrors. Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts cannot once start me.” Supp’d, he had. He’d had more than his fill of all of the horrors his life had thrown at him. Barry was done.

It was dark. It was cold. Barry couldn’t make out much through the strobing lights, an out of season, macabre fireworks display. He strained around a cop about his height, desperate for a peek. He needed to know that it wasn’t her.

Light blue jeans peeked out from under the white sheet draped over the body that lay just feet from the door. He saw one heeled foot, as well. He couldn’t remember what shoes she was wearing. She’d been taller than normal, so there’d have had to be some heel, he supposed, but what did they look like? It didn’t matter. A man in a crisp pressed shirt leaned over and removed the drape, inspecting the corpse. There was no denying it. It was Sally. Her blonde hair lay plastered to her face like a bloodsoaked halo. Her makeup dripped down from her vacant eyes in rivers of darkness. He screamed out for her and moved over the barricade. When 3 cops tried to stop him, he fought against them. “She’s my girlfriend! Let me through!” The man, a detective, he guessed, who’d been nearest Sally’s body reached into her purse, looking for a wallet. “Sally! Sally Reed! Her name-” With a nod from the detective, the cops slid the edge of the barrier away, letting Barry through. 

“What’s your name, son?” another detective asked. He'd never been around for this part before- the found body and the crime scene. Even with Janice, there hadn't been a body or crime scene to speak of. She'd been a missing person. He hardly heard the man's voice, gruff and low. It was gentle and understanding, not probing and forceful. "It's okay, take your time," he said patiently as he placed a firm grip on his shoulder. "Take all the time you need."

"Barry," he gulped when he was finally certain (well, certain enough) that he wasn't going to be sick. "Barry Block. The woman under the sheet is my girlfriend. Sally Reed. I was coming to pick her up from an audition." He glanced down at his watch. 19:24. "I was supposed to be here 20 minutes ago. I could have-"

The older man shook his head. "Now, you can't think like that. If you'd been 20 minutes earlier, all you'd have been was in our way." He set his angled jaw hard and fixed his kind brown eyes on Barry's watery blues. "Is there anyone I can call for you?"

Barry blinked away tears and shook his head. There was something karmic, he supposed, in the guilt he carried. The one person he wanted to call, the one person who might understand, he would never burden with this. 

Just out of Barry's sight, the barest glint of light bounced off a cleanly shorn head as the lilac hood of a windbreaker was pulled up to conceal the water from the crowd. 

"My lord, the queen is dead."

There's a moment of silence in the theatre. No one's sure what to expect more. Luckily, the audience is made up of struggling actors. They're so wrapped up in feeling their own grief that nine are truly seeing the raw emotion Barry is working through. It's pivotal. It's groundbreaking. 

It's 100% not acting.

His face is sullen, showing the significant wear the last few days have brought down upon him. His eyes are red and swollen with tears. He hasn't slept. He hasn't shaved. If his friends were betting folk, they'd take up odds that he hadn't eaten or drunk a bit. "She should have died hereafter," he manages eventually, not yet looking up from the distressed piece of gaff tape just off his toes. Dead on his mark. Sally would be proud. "There would have been time for such a word."

He inches to his left and stares up into the lights, grateful for the temporary steering relief of their glare; a moment in which, if he tries hard enough,he might be able to convince himself that the blonde in the third row is Sally and this is all an elaborate joke. She'll stand up and say "See, Barry? I knew you had it in you! I told you!" She'll step into the aisle and move toward him. "Ages ago, I told you that I made you. All it took was the thought of losing me and you did it! That was acting," she would say gently as she'd reach the adoption of the stage. "That was raw and beautiful and real." She'd hop up onto the stage, slender arms outstretched for him to help. She'd tell him she loves him and then flounce back of house to prepare for her own scene. 

He could almost see her. Almost feel her.

Almost.

Instead, he takes a shallow breath and closes his eyes. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty place from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time," he breathes, looking up, more than a little distraught at the prospect of a thousand tomorrows without Sally. Even one seemed all but unthinkable. "And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. He shakes his head angrily, accenting the force with which his voice has taken.

Barry was not a foolish man. At least, he wouldn't have thought so before he found himself sitting alone in the waiting room at the Los Angeles County Morgue. A sweet, soft-spoken young girl brought Sally’s belongings that could be released out to him. Her clothes had been disposed of- biohazard, they said. Just blood. Just there. No signs of a struggle or assault. She hadn't been violated. Her purse hadn’t been touched. Hardly even by detectives. Her jewelry was inexpensive, but even that had been returned to him. They’d ruled burglary out. Barry had mentioned her abusive ex and the altercation they’d had. The cops asked about Janice, if he thought possibly that there might have been a connection. He huffed a no and they left him, largely, to himself.

So, he sat, thumbing through her miscellaneous personal effects. Among them were 2 strange coins. One, large, silver, and crimped read “la union es la fuerza.” The other bore the image of a wolf on a pedestal beneath a full moon atop a bough of 9 stars. He stared at them for a long time.

“Out! Out, brief candle, he muses, looking down at his hands, heavy before him. He lets them drop and shoves them into his pockets out of instinct before quickly removing them. He taps a cadence on his thighs as his eyes well with tears. “Life’s but a waking shadow,” he says resolutely. He feels his throat tighten and lets Sally’s phantom voice coach him to feel it; to feel her, “a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.” 

Barry had awoken at 20 past 3. His heart raced as he called out for Sally. He rolled to her side of the bed. It almost felt warm. He must have spent some portion of his tortured slumber there. 

He reached for his phone on the nightstand and dialed it.

“Barry? It’s 3 in the morning. Is everything alright?” Mr. Cousineau’s voice asked through the speaker, showing no sign of his own sleep. Whether or not that was a good thing, Barry wasn’t sure.

For the briefest of moments, he regretted the call. He almost hung up. Instead, he closed his eyes, allowing himself the relief of surrender to that moment. 

“Sally’s dead.”

On the other side of the line, he heard the distinct clack of a rocks glass meeting a ceramic coaster on plate glass. “Oh, Barry,” he said, scrubbing his newly free hand up the side of his face. “What ha-” He thought better of asking that question. He didn’t want that much information. “When? How?”

Barry told him. At least, he told him what he thought he could. What he knew. (Nothing for certain.) How he felt. (Lost.) He chased the two foreign coins around each other on the nightstand, wondering where Sally might have gotten them.

Even as he addresses the audience, the coins reside in his pocket. He hopes beyond hope that they’re the key; that maybe they hold the secret to why Sally had been slain.

The audience sniffles, waiting as Barry gathers himself. “It is a tale told by an idiot,” he says, jaw quivering unconsciously, “full of sound and fury,” he adds. He’s almost roaring; the moment has grown to a crescendo.

As if struck by lightning, Barry realizes-

He looked down on a body, lifeless on the floor of Hank’s stash house. Across the knuckles were “union” and “fuerza.”

“That’s it, Bar. Union. You, me, Cristobel,” Hank had said to him one evening as he trained his men. “You train the Bolivians and the Chechens. You bring peace.” He’d beamed up at him with symbolically clasped hands. “Also, you usually come bearing a piece, so it’s double perfect.” Three days later, he’d received a ball cap emblazoned with CKU Local #495. When Barry begrudgingly asked, as prompted, what the letters and numbers stood for, he’d clasped his hands together once more. “Contract Killers Union. My name, Cristobal. You.” If it hadn’t been interrupting a session, he’d have almost been touched in some twisted way. 

Never the less, he’d groaned in protest. “I dunno, dude. I’m already stretched thin with your guys. Adding more would-”

“But he’s my guy. Wouldn’t you want me to help your Sammy?” he asked.

“No,” Barry answered, almost too quickly. “And that’s not her name.”

“I know, Barry,” Hank laughed, as he gave him a light punch on the arm. Barry recoiled, whole body swaying with the impact. “I know her name.”

Barry had paid it virtually no mind. In the moment, he’d been sure that he didn’t actually know her name. But, even if Hank didn’t-

Fuches did.

And if Fuches knew Sally’s name, he may as well have known everything. 

“Barry digs his hand into his pocket and feels the cold disks between his fingers. He’s scrutinized the coins over enough that he can see them as clear as day without ever removing them from his hand. 

It was revenge. When is it not? Sally’s death had been payback. Nothing more than collateral damage.

He clenches the coins in his fist. His eyes turn to flame. “Signifying nothing,” he seethes.

The lights fade to black. By the time they’re back up, Barry’s gone. He’s flying through the theatre, to his car, off to seek a bit of vengeance of his own.

It takes the better part of a day for Barry to track down Hank. When he does, he’s holed up in the backroom of a cellphone repair shop. He’s sitting on a small folding cot and, for just a moment, the fear and grief in his eyes almost stops Barry.

Almost.

Instead, he turns the moment on its head. “Why?” Barry shouts, the door flung open wide beside him. When he doesn’t get an answer, hardly even a reaction, in fact, he asks again, louder, this time. Still, nothing. Hands shaking, he pulls the gun from the holster tucked beneath his left arm and presses the silencer to Hank’s forehead.

For the first time in days, he feels grounded. The gun in his hand seems to hold all the answers.

“I loved him.” Hank looks up at Barry, seeing the truth of their world for likely the first time. He must seem confused because Hank continues without prompting. “Cristobel. I loved him. And you killed him.” He pauses, his eyes never leaving Barry’s. And I know that’s what you do. It’s who you are. It’s one of the things I’ve always admired about you. It’s simple and clean. You’re a killer. That’s it!” Barry takes a step back, gun quivering, but never once moving from it’s intended target. “I just never thought you’d use it against me.”

“You were prepared to-”

“To keep you in check because  _ I  _ am the boss.” He gritted his teeth and shook his head. “Or at least I thought I was. Turns out,” Hank says, eyes a little wild, “Fuches is the boss. You,” he continues, more somber still, knowing that Barry still thinks that he is a free man; that he’s his own boss. That has never been true, and Hank knows that it doesn’t matter if he says it or not. He’s dead anyway. “You are like union mob. You don’t take bossman’s shit anymore.”

Barry looks down on Hank. He can’t decide which emotion he feels more. He knows what he has to do. He knows. He’s killed people he liked a whole hell of a lot more than Hank. He’s killed people for work as long as he can remember. But he’s never killed for personal reasons before. He never thought he was the type. bu t now, gazing upon poor, pitiful Hank, he feels no mercy, no fondness, no second guesses about what he’s going to do before he leaves this room. All that’s there is pure, unadulterated fury raging low in his belly. It’s a fire. But instead of cleansing or warmth, this one is destruction.

As if on cue, Hank speaks again. “You know, you asked me once if you were evil. I kidded. I said, ‘Of course, don’t I tell you that enough?’ Here’s the thing,” he closes his eyes and sighs. “You’re not. Or, at least,” he tilts his head a little, “up until now. You’ve been puppet. Nothing but means to end.” He’s crying now, and Barry sees a glint- just the slightest spark of the duplicity that’s kept Hank alive for so long.

For all he is and isn’t, Hank is first and foremost a manipulative survivor. Barry takes it all in with a baleful, ruefully amused stare. Fucking cockroaches, man. L.A. really is full of them, nevermind the bugs.

Hank sniffles, employing every tactic he’s got. “Now, you have a choice, Barry. You let me go and you are angel. You are merciful God and I live knowing that I am forever in your debt. He clicks his tongue and the waterworks are gone. “Or…”

He pauses, just for a moment, gauging his response. Somehow, after all this time, Barry can still be unreadable. It’s in those cryptic, stoic moments when the muscle on the right side of his jaw throbs or his eyebrows knit together or his hands relax and begin to tap on whatever’s nearest that Hank realizes just how handsome he is. There are worse ways to die, he thinks. It’s almost like the people who go to beautiful vistas to off themselves. Barry is his Grand Canyon.

Not wanting to delay the inevitable any longer, he smiles in one last attempt to be charming. “Or, you kill me.” The pretense drops and he’s staring right through Barry. “I’m dead and you’re the evil piece of shit you’ve always feared you are.”

Barry pauses as if considering it. There’s a tight-lipped smile.

He fires the first shot at the camera that had been in the corner, blinking away as though he wouldn’t notice. 

Hank lets out an amazed laugh. “Barry! Man! I knew you wouldn’t-”

The second shot hits Hank square in the heart. He coughs out a laugh and presses a shaking hand to his own chest. When it comes away blood drenched, he laughs again, this time dampened with tears.  The third and final shot lands right between hank’s eyes, killing him instantly.

Barry shoves the gun back into its holster. 

He was right. Even though he’d gotten carried away, the gunshots went, at the very least, ignored, if not completely unnoticed. He hopped into his car and made it to his next location in no time flat.

Barry storms up to the hotel room’s door and lets himself in. “Barry! Where’ve you been, buddy?” Fuches calls amiably. He’s draped across the bed, a slice of pizza dangling from his slovenly mouth. He spews crumbs as he speaks, a habit Barry has always hated of his. There were any, of course, but that one was certainly up there. “I thought you and your little blonde piece of ass went and eloped on me.” 

The feigned innocence and total disregard for his personal life were definitely worse, Barry thought to himself. Sally was not a piece of ass.

He readies himself with a sharp sniff. “Yeah, not likely,” he says, ramping up, peppering the incoming lies with truth. If he treats it like a scene, it just might work. “She, uh, she’s dead. She was on to me,” he says, picking at his cuticle.

Fuches turns to him, shocked. “She… She what?” He blanches, but there’s a hint of pleasure behind it. 

“She was on to me. She had me cornered.” He shakes his head, allowing himself the sparest sliver of emotion. “I was sloppy and left a gun under my bed. Immediately, her mind went to what happened with Janice-”

“Which one’s Janice?”

“The cop my acting teacher was seeing,” he says, knowing too well that Fuches knows exactly who Janice is. He’s rubbing his nose in it. 

Fuches shakes his head. “Barry, Barry, Barry… I hate to say it, buddy-” he gloats.

Quietly, Barry mutters a quick, ‘No, you don’t,” under his breath.

Standing up and pacing around him, he stops behind his shoulder so Barry has to turn to face him. “You’re right! And let me tell you why!” He says through gnashed teeth. He leans on the dresser with his left hand and slices through the air with his right. “You’ve been distracted since we came to L.A. The tart, the fruity acting class? Can you honestly tell me that hasn’t affected business?”

“It hasnt,” he argues. “If anything, it’s made me better. Happy.” He ignores Fuches’ indignant scoff and continues. “If anything, I finally feel like myself in a way I haven’t in ages.”

That’s enough for Fuches. “This isn’t you! You would never have had the balls to talk to me like this before-”

“Like what? Before what?” Barry roars. “Before she made me realize I could have more than this?” He stammers the start of his sentence a few times before finally sticking it. “She believed in me. She didn’t pressure me to-”

“That’s just it. She didn’t pressure you at all! She let you-”

“Be anything I didn’t want to. She loved me!”   
  
“Waste all your talent; all your worth! That’s all you’re good for!” He takes a moment to reassess his tactics. He’s yelling. He doesn’t like to yell. He’ll do it, but he prefers more subtle tactics. He tones it down. “Don’t talk to me about love. I love you. I’m all you got-”

Barry lets that sit for a moment. It rattles around the room like a ricochet. “Because you won’t let me have anything else. Because you don’t have the balls to do your own dirty work.”

Over the years, he’s done quite enough of Fuches’ meddling to know the stench of it. He knew as soon as he saw Sally lying on the ground.

He and Fuches hadn’t spoken in what felt like ages. Ever since Mr. Cousineau had lost Janice and Fuches raised suspicion to keep him in line, he’d avoided him. He should have known his time was running perilously short.

He should have known.

Suddenly, a horrible thought flies to Barry’s mind. He’s just heard the distinct woosh of a toilet flush, too near to be the next room. They’re not alone and he realizes he’s waltzed straight into a trap. The gun hidden in the back of Fuches’ pants hadn’t gone unnoticed but it’s only then that Barry realizes its intended use. 

“Hey, Barry,” a sweet, sing-song voice says from behind him. “What are you doing he-”

His words are cut off by a silenced shot. 

The thing is, Fuches is a terrible shot. He hits Cousineau in the shoulder. He staggers and falls to the ground. Before he knows it, Barry is by his side. He struggles, whimpering in pain.

“Hey. Hey, Mr. Cousineau,” Barry urges, propping him up and shrugging off his cotton button-down shirt to stop the bleeding. “Stay with me, okay? You’ll be alright. Just hold this right here.”

The older man winces as Barry guides his hand to stop the bleeding. “Why are you here?” he asks, voice hardly above a whisper. 

Barry shakes his head. Now is not the time to unpack all of that. Someday, he thinks. Maybe he deserves to know, now. After everything? Someday, maybe. But not right now.

When his attention returns to Fuches, he sees a man hardened, ready for the second shot. “What do you want, man?” he cries out. “I’ve given you everything and I’m done! Now,” he pauses, suddenly too astutely aware that he’s backed against the wall. He takes a deep breath to steady his voice and continues, “let me get him out of here, then you and I can settle this.” 

Fuches tuts his tongue. “You know I can’t do that,” he levels. “Or, at least, you did before you let a simpering kid into your bed and let her pussywhi-”

Barry lunges toward Fuches. They’re deadly close. “Don’t talk about her! Ever!” He grabs him by the wrist and manipulates the gun toward Fuches’ chin. I’ve told you,” he growls, “You don’t get a thought about Sally.”

He smiles. “You’re the one that killed her, Barry. I think,” he says, gesturing down to a stunned Cousineau with nothing more than the flick of his eyes. “I think this is guilt talking.”

Barry hardly reacts. “No, I just wanted to see if you’d really let me take the fall,” he snarls.

That’s the thing, isn’t it? When a wild animal is trapped, even one that’s seen attempts at domestication, they lash out. They go feral. Their baser instincts take over and… you are fucked.

Somehow, Fuches misses the wild-eyed rage scrawled over Barry’s face. Somehow, his own fight or flight reflexes haven’t been triggered. Somehow, he still sees himself as in control of the situation; as the apex predator.

Barry starts to prowl, encircling Fuches slowly. “I know what happened. I’m not blind.” He mentally inventories himself. 2 guns, half a dozen extra clips, his wallet, a picture of himself and Sally, and Hank’s coins. “You couldn’t keep me contained, you couldn’t isolate and brainwash me any longer, so you pulled out all the stops. “ He stops, just behind Fuches, his face mere centimeters from his ear. “You knew how hurt Hank was, so you figured he was an easy mark. He was desperate, so he was so, so easy to flip.” He walks around him to stand between Cousineau and Fuches, blocking the teacher’s attention. “You told him Sally was the way to get back at me.”

“She was your weak point,” Fuches says plainly.

“I love her!”

“That makes you weak!”

The shouted words hang thick in the air. Neither dares speak for a moment. The room is quiet, save Cousineau’s labored breathing.

Fuches takes a few cocky steps toward Barry. It’s clear from his entire demeanor he thinks he’s won. “She’s not the only reason you’re weak. You’ve always been weak, mind you, but this is new.” He laughs and shakes his head. “You’ve forgotten though.”

Barry’s nostrils flaring and the steady tracking of Fuches’ movement with his eyes are the only signs he’s aware. His jaw is steeled. His muscles are rigid. He’s ready to fight.

The problem is that Fuches isn’t there to fight. If he wanted a fight, there’d be no bystanders. Barry knows that. His mind hovers on it for a moment. Why the hell is Cousineau here?

“You’ve forgotten who’s always been in your corner, Barry. You’ve forgotten,” he says, voice velvety smooth and deadly serious. “You’ve forgotten who’s always going to be here.”

The second shot in the hotel room is more sudden. In the blink of an eye, Cousineau is dead, Fuches taking deadly aim and leaving Barry speechless. His eyes lose focus before he even reaches the older man’s side. 

Barry looks up, splattered with fresh blood. “Why?” He asks, fearing that he already knows the answer.

Fuches laughs that dark laugh again. “Because I’m all you’ve got! This is what it always comes down to isn’t it?”

It’s a horrifying notion to him, but it’s true. Barry is alone. He has no one.

There’s a slight puff to Fuches’ chest. He’s so sure of his victory. He takes Barry’s silence as his acknowledgment of that fact too. “So, now, you’ve had your fun,” he says, closing the gap. “Your little adventure,” he loses any humor in his voice. “Now, you come back to work. You come home.”

Barry nods, swallowing the lump in his throat. He sticks his hands in his pockets. If Fuches wants the beaten down, stray dog version o Barry, he can do that. He certainly feels him, shrinking from within him; wilting.

"That’s my boy,” Fuches coos.

Barry lets a few tears fall. “There’s just one thing,” he says quietly. “Why Hank? Of all people…”

He shrugs. That had all been surreptitious, really. “He came to me. His best friend killed his boyfriend. What better than a direct course of action? A bit of tit for tat.” He smiles a crooked smile and swings his arms wide. “His best friend kills his guy? Simple. Kill his best friend’s girl. It’s those loose ends I’ve been telling you about, Bar.” He wraps an arm around Barry and gives him a condescending squeeze. Then, he casts a pitying eye on Cousineau. Attachments are weaknesses.”

Barry nods somberly. “Then, I guess it’s time for you to go, too.” The gun that had been concealed at his hip is suddenly dug into Fuches’ ribs, angled up, directly at his heart. 

He stumbles before falling onto the couch. It’s barely moments before he bleeds out. In that time, it’s Barry who experiences his life pass before his eyes. As he stares down into the face of his once-mentor, he can almost feel the source of his betrayal.

There was his first birthday out of the corps. Fuches had taken him to a seedy little strip club. He’d bought him a private dance from the most beautiful, most expensive girl there. A high roller, she’d called him. He was totally flustered. Until her boss came in to thank them for their generosity and extend some special services, that is. That was when Fuches put a bullet in the guy’s ear and one in the back of the girl’s head. 

“This is the deal,” he’d told him. “I got you out of your mess, now you manage mine.”

Barry leaned over and was sick directly into the ice bucket, all over the champagne. “What the fuck?” That was all he could choke out before the second wave hit him.

“Come on, soldier boy. Get it together,” Fuches directed. “Take his money clip,” he added, pushing Barry onto the corpse. “That was my last hit. They’re all yours now.” Barry stared after him as he walked out the door. “And grab the champagne. Waste not want not,” he called over his shoulder.

The world spun backward on its axis. He was 5. Fuches and his dad were drinking on the deck under his bedroom window. 

“You know, you could handle some of this yourself,” a much younger Fuches said.

His dad was quiet. He was always quiet. “No. I have a family now. I won’t risk that. Especially with her gone… I’ve told you-”

“I know,” he says distantly. “Strength in unity. He could hear Fuches tapping his foot. “What about our unity? You killed-”

His dad sighed the same put upon sigh that Fuches came to employ upon him. “Because you got sloppy.”

“How was my relationship sloppy but your wife was strength?” he asked, the hurt in his voice obvious.

Barry walked over to the window and looked down on them. They looked so small. “Because you tried to leave,” he heard his father say. “I’ve never tried to avoid my responsibilities, Monroe.” Phantom conversations have a way of turning back up. In this mind’s eye, somehow the Fuches lying before him, dead, looks smaller still than he had that quiet night decades earlier.

But suddenly, it all clicks into place. The phone call he’d gotten in basic all made sense. “Your dad’s gone now, kid. It’s just you and me.” The line had gone silent for a moment and Barry was unsure of whether or not he was supposed to answer. Instead, Fuches muttered a brief, “Strength in unity, right?” He continued the conversation as if he’d called to check in on him absently, like it was just something he did routinely.

That “strength in unity” echoed in Barry’s ears over and over. It suddenly doesn’t sit well with him. He gives it a moment of hard thought. That’s when the penny drops.

Everything he’s done since Sally died. Worse, since Korengal, crashes down around him. Seeing Fuches dead in front of him, Barry is suddenly free. He can feel the weight of his crimes. Every drop of spilt blood appears on his hands. They’re stains he can never dream to scrub out.

When he started for the hotel, he hadn’t had a gameplan for after. The world could be his. He could disappear and start over. He could, and should, he reasons, turn himself in. Pay for it all. Spend the rest of his life in jail.

But he can’t.

His face is burning. His heart is racing. His palms are sweaty. He knows he’s unfit for any of those outcomes.

He knows that the guilt will eat him alive. He knows that losing Sally, being the sole reason she’s gone is already too much for him. He knows that, now, he has no direction. Who is he if he’s not a hitman? Could he be an actor? Could he live some semblance of an average middle American life? Could he even try?

No.

No, the more Barry muses on it, steadfastly not looking at the two corpses with whom he’s taken up companionship. He almost asks one for advice, then laughs at himself. Not only would his acting teacher have no idea, he was already dead.

Fuches was right about one thing, he supposes. Barry is alone.

Screwing his eyes shut, Barry wills an invented answer.

Inside his mind lives a memory. One of Cousineau confessing his intent to kiss his gun. He still doesn’t really understand the metaphor but the point stands. He now knows that desperation; that sorrow.

In a feat of calculated evenness, he lifts the sidearm in his hand and methodically fiddles with the trigger. He’s never thought seriously about killing himself. Not really. He’s seen how quickly a blow to the head will seal the deal. And there’s no coming back from that. 

The most shocking thing to him is that he hadn’t realized that this was the ending he’d been marching toward all along. With his death, the cycle ends.

He tries to think of something he has to do before he does. He’s in a hotel room, so his body will be found. He doesn’t need to write a note. Who would read it? He doesn’t need to seek out a priest. If he believed in an afterlife, in God, he’d know just where he was bound. He has no affairs to get in order. There’s nothing for him to leave behind. It’s all done.

This is it.

His heart pounds in his chest, doing what it knows how to do- keep him alive. His brain? His brain is a different story. It has already skipped town. He’s totally calm. Barry doesn’t need to think to kill. That’s all this is. One last job. This one, he’ll even do for free. That’s all it’s worth to him, anyway. Besides, the life he’s trading has already cost him everything.

As he sticks the piece in his mouth, his lips curled around the cold metal, he steadies his breath. His body is pointlessly fighting to stay alive. The adrenaline just provides clarity; determination. It’s the rush that comes with curling your toes over the edge of a diving board and peering into the water below.

This time, instead of a leap and a splash, the rush is met with the sharp bang of gunfire and his body meeting the floor. The occupants of the room next door scream. The door rattles, then opens. Sirens grow closer.

The hotel is filled with noise and panic. So much energy. So much life.

But for Barry, the rest is silence.

**Author's Note:**

> Brief mention of Sally's past abuse and a rule out of sexual assault, Gun Violence, mental and emotional abuse and manipulation.
> 
> [Major character death: all. Sally, Hank, Cousineau, Fuches, Barry.]


End file.
